


Dreams unwind

by lallivaesterstroem



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Dreamsharing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:40:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27689756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lallivaesterstroem/pseuds/lallivaesterstroem
Summary: “Your dream has a sky?” he asked, and it sounded less like a question aimed at Lalli and more like thinking out loud, as if he were trying to get to the bottom of a problem on his own.“Of course. Everything has a sky.”--Or: Emil and Lalli meet up in a dream. The night sky, even in dreamscapes, is too beautiful to ignore.
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	Dreams unwind

Lalli knew the colours spilling around him as well as he knew himself. He blinked once, twice, watched the familiar forest and lake take shape, molding slowly into a place he called his own. Then came the gentle noise of water, the rustling of branches and chirping of birds, and he could smell the pine surrounding him. He could sit here in silence, look into the water, wait for a sign and hopefully receive none. And so the mage sat up, arms resting on his knees and head hung low, listening to the sounds of forest, waiting for-

Someone else was here. Not a spirit, he could feel that much, a  _ someone _ .

He stood up quickly, hoping to all the gods that it was neither braid guy nor Onni- he wanted nothing more than to be alone tonight- which only left the category of ‘things that want to kill him’ open. One hand reaching for his dagger, the other pushing his fur coat out of the way, he spun around, looking for the source of the disturbance.

Emil was standing on the shore, glowing in the speckles of light passing through the branches, confused but smiling, and the moment he saw him, the ground opened up under them.

Once the flash of light died out, he found himself on a grassy cliff with a steep slope, overlooking nothing but darkness. A couple of flowers, grey and colourless in the moonlight, some stones- unremarkable, one of thousands around the world, yet somehow still familiar. Emil was a few feet away from him, looking around frantically. It dawned on Lalli that it was probably that mountain they climbed in Brúardalur, that long day in the pouring rain, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to wonder why they ended up there, why it seemed to have been split in half, why it was the dead of night. The shock still hadn’t quite worn off. Emil had never appeared in his dream before, not like this, not in  _ his  _ dream. They’d always end up in a place like this, in-between together. Never in his space.

When he turned to Emil again, just to make sure they were both still in one piece, his friend was looking up for some reason.

“Your dream has a sky?” he asked, and it sounded less like a question aimed at Lalli and more like thinking out loud, as if he were trying to get to the bottom of a problem on his own. 

“Of course. Everything has a sky.”

“I guess I just never thought about it before,” Emil said, still craning his neck, still in that distracted tone, his eyes wide in a strange sort of wonder. Lalli didn’t get it, really. He could see the real light-speckled veil covering the Earth any time he wished, and there was nothing special about the one appearing in dreams. The stars, glittering gold forged by the sky-smith, were now a mere image in their minds, dream-approximation, not worth dwelling on this much.

Lalli looked into the distance instead, trying to make out the shapes- houses but no lights on, a village, indiscernible layout, shifting in the darkness. He couldn’t tell if it was the Icelandic village, or his own hometown, or something else entirely, perhaps a fragment of Emil’s memory. It was like the houses were in the bottom of a murky lake, roofs submerged, waves distorting everything, and by the time it reached his eyes they were unrecognisable. He didn’t dare to peer over the edge of the cliff, didn’t want to look straight down at whatever may be there. The wind whipped around him, against his face, and for a moment he felt completely alone.

A rustle coming from behind startled him out of his thoughts- Emil, sitting down on the grass, still looking up with that smile on his lips. He said something about knowing ‘a thing or two’ about the stars, pointed upwards at nothing in particular, and Lalli decided to join him. It seemed that there was nothing to look at beyond the dark plunge beneath the cliff, which he’d already scrutinised, and the stars in the sky. He sat next to Emil. He waited.

“See that one? That’s the big dog. Those three stars are the head, and then these are the tail,” Emil gestured, eyes fixed on the night sky.

_ Iso koira _ . The easiest to spot, with the brightest star at its head. Emil’s struggle to point it out was a little pathetic and a little adorable, depending on whether Lalli was looking at his fumbling outstretched hand missing the mark or his excited expression, squinting to see better. And then he turned to look at him and that excitement was gone, replaced by a frown.

“You can’t tell where I’m pointing at from there,” he said, fake-upset, “look here.”

Emil’s face was suddenly right next to his, an arm around his shoulder and the other still pointing at the sky, and Lalli froze. Perhaps it was the unexpected touch, the closeness, but something about it made him jump. To his credit, Emil noticed, letting go and moving away, an apology already on his lips. But before he could get to it Lalli inched closer, at his own pace, wanting to say that  _ it’s okay, just let me _ , hoping his expression would do the trick instead. He just needed to ease into it, and soon enough they were close once again, so Lalli looked up, pointedly avoiding Emil’s gaze, in order to urge him to do the same. Back to the stars. 

“And the little dog- huh, shouldn’t it be somewhere around…”

_ Pieni koira _ , just a little off to the side, trailing behind  _ Orion. Kaksoset, Härkä, Yksisarvinen _ . The stars were his constant companions, by his side every night when no one else was.  _ Köli, Ajomies, Virta _ . His gaze swept across the sky. He knew them by heart.

Not that he’d say a word of it to Emil. It was much more amusing waiting for the realisation, that moment he stops talking and lets the cogs in his head turn:  _ hey, what if that silly Finn who spends all night outside, where the stars are, knows a couple things more about them than I do… _

But this was fine too. He didn’t have to think as long as he kept talking. Emil’s hair looked grey in the moonlight but with that same shine, messy from the wind, and Lalli couldn’t help but reach up and tuck a lock behind his ear, just so that it doesn’t bother him. No other reason. Emil turned to look at him for a moment, not enough to read his expression, and then quickly looked away.

“Orion is also, ah, somewhere,” his hand was now flitting between several constellations, none of them the one he was looking for. “This sky is weird. Did you ever notice that? That the dream sky is weird. But you probably already know, because you’re… you know. And I’m so new at this. Not at dreaming! Just, this whole...”

He decided to let Emil ramble nervously until he tired himself out, ending his rant with a frustrated little groan. It was strange that he couldn’t quite focus on the sound of his voice, how he could feel that lilt all Swedes had to their words but still understand him- another peculiarity of dreams he never really noticed until he and Emil became connected like this. Then they were quiet for a couple of heartbeats, taking in the view.

The corner of Lalli’s lips twitched into a smile, as close to softness as he could get. Emil was too busy staring up at the sky to notice. Lalli was too busy looking at him to care.

But something changed moments after. He could feel it in the air, creeping in slowly. Emil’s expression turned melancholy, resigned, and when he finally spoke, he echoed a statement he made a long time ago. This time, he said it with a smile, almost sad, mostly distracted, like he didn’t know the words would come out until he said them: “Makes me not want to wake up tomorrow.”

In the resulting silence, Lalli could hear something from the depths, from the village, and when he looked down, he saw a sliver of orange in the distance, like the stroke of a brush, a splatter. Fire. Emil’s fire. An uncomfortable feeling settled in his gut, a pain for someone else, something tugging at his heart.

“Why? You’re safe now. You have food and shelter,” he said instead, trying to keep him occupied. Steadying his voice took more effort than he expected, but he didn’t want Emil to notice anything was amiss. It was Lalli’s fault that his dreams were no longer silly meaningless thought-leftovers that played during the night. It was Lalli’s fault he was here in the first place.

“But I’m not… like this. With you,” Emil sounded distant, and he was looking away now, not at the stars and not towards Lalli, but at the ground next to him. Like he was trying to hide his face, but didn’t want to go too far, move too much. Like he was counting the blades of grass beneath them.

Lalli knew that he probably wasn’t talking about… whatever it was that they were. He was surely talking about the feeling of safety, the freedom of dreaming- the fact that they were in it together was simply a byproduct of an accident, his own mistake, surely not something Emil looked forward to, surely-

Lalli bit his tongue. He had to force himself to say it while he still could, before the connection that kept them here crumbled again. Before he had to deal with pouring his thoughts into words, then forcing those words into the confines of a language he barely spoke. The wind whistled around them, and he knew this was his last chance. He put his hand on top of Emil’s, caressed it with his thumb, not quite knowing what he was doing.

“You could be, if you want to.”

And then the world was plunged into darkness and he could feel reality looming in the edges of his consciousness. He’d deal with the consequences when he woke up.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> the finnish is just constellation names, which lalli knows because reasons. if you're curious:  
> kaksoset, härkä, yksisarvinen, köli, ajomies, virta.  
> gemini, taurus, monoceros, carina, auriga, eridanus.
> 
> find me on tumblr @lallivaesterstroem! i'm always ready to chat emilalli and taking fic requests <3  
> hope you enjoyed this :D many thanks to ao3 user acina_m for the prompt! this was originally posted as a prompt fill on my tumblr, i fixed it up a little and posted here.  
> and infinite thanks to my friend for betaing <3


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